Biz media's love affair with Dimon

Yvette Kantrow of The Deal writes about the media fawning all over J.P. Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon.

Kantrow writes, “In fact, the very virtues the press constantly praises in Dimon — his cost cutting, his wonkiness, his blunt speech, his faith in the virtue of banking behemoths — we find reprehensible in everyone else, including, most strikingly, his old mentor, Weill.

“Indeed, in the Times piece, when Dimon spouts his Wal-Mart theory of banking — that just as people want to buy lettuce and TVs under one roof they want to visit one financial institution for credit cards and mortgages — an impressed Lowenstein writes that ‘few people think of banks this way.’ Really? Weill thought about and talked about banks that way constantly, as did any number of proponents of so-called supermarket banking — an idea that, thanks to the crisis, has fallen into ill repute. But when uttered by Dimon, the concept is treated as not just novel, but fascinating. ‘It is an intriguing comparison,’ Lowenstein writes of likening Chase to Wal-Mart. ‘This is how Dimon wants to be seen — as a retailer with 5,200 branches nationwide whose products happen to be financial services.’

“That’s also how Weill wanted to be seen, but it didn’t quite work out for him as Citi grew too large and discombobulated to be effectively managed. The story does not discuss that, however, choosing instead to boil down Citi’s myriad problems to ‘hubris’ and to Weill’s failure to name a capable successor — someone like Dimon, we assume.”

Read more here.